The Best of Shopify Masters 2016: A Top 10 Roundup

Shopify Masters is a podcast where Shopify merchants share their stories, mistakes, and learning experiences on their journey from startup to success.

Twice a week, every Tuesday and Thursday, our host Felix Thea interviews a different entrepreneur to tap into their knowledge so that you—the listener—can walk away with actionable insights to apply to your own ecommerce store.

From the co-founder of JM&Sons who earned PR mentions by turning a shipping container into a furniture showroom, to the entrepreneur who bought Potato Parcel and now makes $20K a month selling "potato-grams", Shopify Masters explores the stories of a diverse mix of entrepreneurs to:

Analyze their winning strategies.

Share their recommended apps and resources.

Discuss the hurdles and challenges that many entrepreneurs face.

With over 100 episodes to date, there are a lot of hidden gems that deserve to be highlighted.

So we've rounded up the best of the best this past year to bring you the top 10 most-listened-to episodes of 2016.

Subscribe to Shopify Masters on Google Play and iTunes!

30 Days To Market: How This $800K Coconut Oil Business Bootstrapped In The First Months

How House Of Hannie Is Building a Profitable Instagram Following

Instagram is a visual platform popular among millennials with no shortage of influencers to partner with.

But it can be a challenge to build a profitable following of your own from scratch. Instead of buying fake followers, which defeats the purpose of having an audience, you can try directly engaging with your target audience instead.

What started as a time-consuming manual process for Chris Jones, liking and commenting on other people's posts, was eventually able to scale by introducing some light automation.

How zeroUV Made $9 Million Last Year Selling On Online Marketplaces

As a store owner, you will inevitably have to compete with online marketplaces like Amazon and eBay for customers.

But instead of competing, you can sell there as well, as zeroUV did with their sunglasses. For Brian Fujita, one of the keys to success is to list your products in all the marketplaces where your customers shop.

1,000 True Fans: Tapping into Facebook Groups to Generate Sales

Facebook Groups are where people collect and come together around a shared interest.

Niche businesses can likely find hundreds of potential customers in these groups. But for Karen Kawallek who managed to create, moderate and grow her own Facebook Group, she found it gave her access to hundreds of hyper-loyal, super-enthusiastic fans who weren't just repeat customers but advocates too.

How Cold Emailing Helped Craft Street Design Go From Side Hustle to Full Time Business

Just because a marketing tactic doesn't scale, doesn't mean it can't be effective and cost-efficient.

Cold emailing is one approach that some argue doesn't work as well as it used to. But Pratima of Craft Street Design has proven that if you take the time to do prospect research, truly personalize your emails and make each one count, it can be a good—if limited—way of generating sales early on.

How One Entrepreneur Generates $1 Million a Year Selling Marijuana Accessories

The marijuana industry presents many big opportunities for entrepreneurs as society develops a more lenient attitude towards the herb.

Ben Kovacs is a Sales Executive at Twitter with two side hustles in the growing market of cannabis culture. In a still-stigmatized space, he decided to focus on the long underserved professional class of marijuana users by selling high-end accessories and supplements.

Why not having to rely on immediate revenue can help you focus on building a product-first business.

What it’s like working a demanding sales job and running 2 Shopify businesses at the same.

There's a big difference between having a product that people love and enjoy, and having a business.

How Solé Bicycles Sells 15,000 Bikes A Year Using Content Marketing

Guest: Ben Petraglia, Sole Bicycles

Building a lifestyle brand is one of the best ways to differentiate yourself from your competitors, and that's because it's not an easy thing to do.

Content marketing has proven to be one of the best ways to establish a lifestyle brand. But whereas many might think of writing articles first, Solé Bicycles chose mixtapes and art because that's the content their audience consumes.